Physical AI for warehouse automation company Nomagic has announced that its Shoebox Picker has won a 2026 IFOY Award in the Robot Warehouse System category.
The award recognizes Nomagic’s breakthrough in automating one of the most stubborn challenges in warehouse operations: the handling of two-piece shoeboxes in high-volume fashion and footwear fulfillment environments. Unlike most standard cartons, shoeboxes are fragile, variable in size and orientation, and often unsealed — making them notoriously difficult for conventional warehouse robots to pick reliably. Nomagic’s Shoebox Picker combines AI-driven perception with specialized gripping hardware to automate that workflow at commercial scale.
“Winning an IFOY Award is an important validation of what we’ve believed for a long time: the next major leap in warehouse automation will come from Physical AI solutions that can solve the messy, highly variable tasks that legacy automation still struggles with,” said Kacper Nowicki, CEO and co-founder of Nomagic.
“Shoeboxes are a perfect example of that challenge. They represent a meaningful share of fashion e-commerce volume, but because they’re delicate, inconsistent and often unsealed, they’ve historically required manual handling. Shoebox Picker changes that, and this award is a strong endorsement of the progress our team has made.”
Shoeboxes account for a significant portion of order volume in fashion and footwear logistics, yet they have remained one of the last major manual bottlenecks in warehouse automation. Nomagic developed the Shoebox Picker to address that gap directly. The solutionis designed to pick, pack and sort shoeboxes in live warehouse environments, including mixed-bin scenarios, without requiring items to be pre-oriented. The Shoebox Picker can automate up to 98% of shoebox SKUs and is already deployed in a live customer environment.
The win builds on a period of strong momentum for Nomagic as the company expands its commercial footprint and deepens its investment in Physical AI for logistics. Earlier this year, Nomagic announced a $10 million Series B extension, bringing total funding to more than $84 million, with plans to accelerate commercial operations in the U.S. and continue developing its Visual-Language-Action models for warehouse robotics.
The IFOY Awards, short for International Intralogistics and Forklift Truck of the Year, sees winners selected following a multi-stage evaluation process involving testing, scientific review and assessment by an independent international jury.
